A right "Royal" weekend!

Hi everyone it's nice to be back but I miss the gorgeous weather! We had a lovely holiday, very relaxing as per the "pensioners handbook" :) We have a busy weekend ahead and I have been making a special card for the occasion. My friend's cousin and her husband are over from Nova Scotia on holiday and celebrating their Ruby anniversary. Jean is hosting a luncheon party for them tomorrow and on Sunday we are all going on a jazz river cruise down the Thames. Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the Coronation and in Canada Joy is known as the "Royal Doyle" and does tongue in cheek observations of the royal family on CBC so it's an appropriate day for a celebration.
Anyway enough of my waffle come and see what I made:)

This is the box I made for the tealight card. All the instructions can be found here by the amazing Marianne.
I used a Tattered Lace circle die for the embellishment and the central panel is gilded.

The papers are Anna Griffin and inside Prima Botanical.

I have put chocolates and not tea lights in the box, nice ones from Thornton's:) I originally bought a box of Lindor chocs but they wouldn't fit so I had to eat them!!!!

You can just about see the chocs here:)

So hopefully the weather will hold for the weekend and I'll see you all next week.

Thanks for visiting and hopefully leaving a comment so I can visit you!

The letter K

Hi everyone, just a quick post for the Alpha challenge as we are off to sunny climes on Monday and I won't be posting anything for about 10 days:) I can't wait to feel the sun on these old bones!!
Back to the matter in hand and the letter this time is K,  not an easy word, it must be one of the shorter chapters in the dictionary. I was clearing up the detritus on my desk when I espied two cocktail sticks and a length of string, BINGO! So here is my page, what do you think?

Not easy knitting with cocktail sticks, I can tell you! Took me back to my college days when I made several handbags, knitted in string and lined. It's a killer on the fingers! I added a little bead to each end and the rest is fairly obvious:) 

Just thought I'd leave you with a couple of pics of Charlie from the weekend:)

Thanks for taking the time to visit and hopefully leaving a comment and I will catch up with you all in a couple of weeks.

Hasta la vista!

Less is More week 119-one layer!

Hi everyone from a wet and windy London town! We had a lovely couple of days with Charlie and had him all to ourselves for the day yesterday, great fun all round:) He is so responsive now and understands everything! I got my first kiss too:)
Anyway back to crafty matters and this weeks challenge over at Less is More is as follows:

This week it's everyone's favourite.. One Layer Cards and this week we would like you to use a

Coloured Card Blank

Yes that's right, none of your boring, white, ivory, black or kraft card blanks we want to see you add some colour.

I very rarely use coloured card , except maybe for Xmas cards, so I don't have much to choose from but I found this lilac card and here's what I came up with:

The stamp is from an old oriental Papermania set and is stamped and embossed in black. The symbol means Love. I added white highlights with a gel pen and a frame using a black pen to create dots.

I had two baby cards to make last week for my friend who has a new baby grandaughter who had a bit of a shaky start but is home now and doing well, her name is Primrose:)

I stamped some flowers onto card and cut out a bodice and pleated another piece for the skirt. I added some ribbon and made a little hanger.

This one is using a cuttlebug EF and a ribbon with a rolled flower.

Thanks for visiting and hopefully leaving a comment:)

Artist in residence:)

Morning everyone hope you have a lovely weekend to look forward to? We are quizzing tonight and then off to Portsmouth for some Charlie sitting:) Such a trial as you can imagine!! Anyway here I am last minute (seems to be a pattern this week) for the Alpha challenge which is A.
I've been dithering over what word to use and then when my CS magazine arrived there was a great stamp on the front with a jar and paintbrushes etc so I thought I'd go with ARTIST. So last night I prepped my page and got all my embellies together and guess what? I can't find the stamp anywhere!  The craft fairies have hidden it somewhere so my page is not exactly as I wanted it but I quite like it so come and see:

Fairly self explanatory, I made an easel and a picture to go on it which I framed with a peel off.

Thanks for visiting and hopefully leaving a comment:)

Less is More week 118-colour

Hi everyone I'm running a bit late for this week's LIM challenge which is as follows:

Colour Challenge 

This month we would like you to choose TWO opposite colours from this Colour Wheel

I couldn't make up my mind on any combination, it's strange because I have used a colour wheel all my working life to colour correct hair when it's gone wrong!! So to me opposites cancel each other out:) Anyway I eventually decided on violet and yellow and here's what I came up with:

I also made a card using the same colours but I didn't think it was CAS enough for Chrissie and Jen so went with the first one:)

I'm also putting my 2nd card in for the MMM challenge which is Anything that flies

Thanks for visiting and hopefully leaving a comment as I love to read them!

Embossing and texture.

Hi everyone, I hope you are experiencing lovely bank holiday weather? It's certainly warm here with lots of sun but a quite a bit of cloud. I saw the challenge this month over at Stamping Sensations is to create  a card with any type of embossing and texture. Kylie had a lovely card on her blog for the ATSM challenge and I wanted to case it so come and see how I interpreted it:

I used a brick effect ef , tore the edges and inked with DI Pumice stone. The window is a MB die and I stamped a scene, watercoloured it and put it behind . I used a scrap of pattered paper to create a roman blind adding a ribbon and paper bead for the pull.  I scored a piece of card for the window box and popped it up with pinflair and added some creata flower dies coloured with PM's. I've added a close up below. The sentiment is a WOW one added as a tab.

                                   I'm also linking this to the challenge over at Get Creative-flowers

Thanks for taking the time to visit and hopefully leaving me a comment, I love to read them:)

Enjoy the weekend!

Less is More week 117-sketch

Wow another glorious sunny day and we are jet washing the garden and tidying up but I had to come in and post my very late card for the LIM challenge:)

This week we have a sketch for you drawn by Jen.

It's simplicity itself, so to add a little constraint, we ask that the card stays in this orientation.  Remember we still want to see plenty of white space.

I was sorting through my stamps looking for one that appears to be MIA when I came across this set. It's part of a vintage set from Stamp Addicts and I love the ruined archway. So come and see what I made:

I stamped and masked the frame and then stamped part of the archway in black memento. I added a little colour to the foliage to give depth with an aqua brush. The banner was stamped and fussy cut around the image and the sentiment printed with my digital print runner. I coloured her in and added some black paper pen as faux pearls.

Hope you have enjoyed your visit:)

Happy Birthday!

Hi everyone, are you enjoying the gorgeous weather which may last for the bank holiday weekend!!! We were Charlie sitting last weekend and the weather was soooooo cold! It brightened up on Monday and we took Charlie for a walk to the park where they have a mini domestic zoo which he loved. I put his reins on and he walked for 40 minutes:) He quite liked the slide but refused to get in a swing:)

Today is my sister Karen's birthday and as she is an avid crafter I try to find something a bit different card wise for her. Come and see what I made:

 

I saw this technique on Ruth Hamilton's blog and loved the design so here is my take on it. Ruth's post is pretty long so scroll down until you find the deets if you fancy having a go:)
I used an SU embossing folder and some Prima botanical paper for the contrast and I made the candy buttons from the same pad.

Tomorrow is my great nephew's birthday, he will be 17 and I find it really hard to make cards for teenagers. I've kept it fairly minimal using a MB die and some hand cut clouds. I sponged through the waste for some interest on the insert.

Thanks for taking the time to leave any comments and a big hello to Deepti and Sandie who are new followers. They are new members of the ATSM DT which I have just resigned from as we have a busy few months coming up and there are some challenges that I have missed out on because of DT commitments:) 

Apologies for lack of commenting I hope to catch up soon:)